The Farm

When my family first began going to the farm - a forty acre piece of property with a two-room house as old as Noah - I was five years old. My brother was almost three.

According to my parents, the only reason they bought it was because our original weekend trip to Taquamenon Falls had been ruined by my brother's constant and unexplained crying for 24 hours straight that left my parents so completely exhausted, frustrated and disappointed that they packed up the tent and left for the safety of my grandparents house. I always believed they simply wanted to give my brother to the first available person they could find because he was making them crazy.

I don't know what could be 'unexplained' about a kid crying his eyes out when you stick him in an unheated, mosquito-infested tent out in the middle of nowhere with all sorts of weird sounds, unfamiliar surroundings and tell him to go to sleep after he slept the entire day away during the car trip there. Hmmmm . . .